The applicability of the GELOPH<15> in children and adolescents: First evaluation in a large sample of Danish pupils

Gelotophobia is defined as the fear of being laughed at. This is the first empirical study on gelotophobia among children and adolescents (aged 11-16 years). Data was collected in Denmark (N = 1,322). The Danish version of the GELOPH<15> (Führ, Proyer & Ruch, 2009) was used and yielded good psychometric properties in terms of a high internal consistency of the items and the factorial structure (one-dimensional solution) was highly similar to data for the adult version. As in adults, higher bullying experiences were well predicted by the individual expression of the fear of being laughed at. While the actual number of absent days from school was widely unrelated to gelotophobia, those pupils who frequently think about not attending school but have a low number of actual absent days yielded the highest gelotophobia scores. This study shows that gelotophobia can be reliably measured with the standard form of the GELOPH<15>. The pupils did not report problems with understanding the items (though the eleven year olds needed help by teachers for filling in the items). This study allows planning and conducting follow-up studies (e.g., longitudinal design) with much younger populations as has so far been studied. The knowledge about the fear of being laughed at among children and adolescents is still very limited.